According to the Chicago Tribune, Republican Congressman Peter Roskam is working to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from adopting regulations concerning the handling of contaminated coal waste. Roskam, along with several other members of the Illinois Congressional delegation, told the Office of Management and Budget in a letter that “regulating coal ash as hazardous material would impost “steep costs” on Illinois energy consumers, who draw much of their power from coal”.
But Roskam, who draws significant campaign contributions from the electric utilities standing to benefit if regulations are blocked, is disregarding the public health risks associated with contaminated coal waste, which, according to a McClatchy report, is presently subjected to less regulation than ordinary household trash. Coal-fired power plants each year generate millions of tons of ash contaminated with heavy metals and store it in liquid form in storage ponds or in landfills. When impounded in liquid form, there is a risk of catastrophic spills, like the one that occurred in the TVA plant at Harriman, TN in 2008. In either case, the waste poses a threat to the safety of drinking water. In 2007, an EPA report identified 24 sites in 13 states where there has already been surface and/or ground water contamination. 26 sites have been identified nationwide by the EPA as having a high hazard rating. Two of those sites are in Illinois: the facilities operated by Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc at Alton and Havana.
Further compounding the risk are the 70 new conventional coal-fired plants that are currently proposed. 3 of those are in Illinois and they are expected to produce and addition 632,521 tons of waste containing 8 tons of toxic metals annually.
Peter Roskam complains about the additional costs of energy production that may come with EPA regulation of coal waste, but those cost will come whether we regulate or not. If we don’t protect groundwater from contamination we will face cleanup costs and unnecessary healthcare costs later. The costs associated with preventing pollution should be paid by the energy companies now rather than the taxpayers later. Linking those costs to the production of electricity from coal will provide incentive for development of new, clean energy technologies and new green jobs.
Please contact Peter Roskam to urge him to stop interfering with EPA efforts to protect our drinking water. You can reach him at (630) 893-9670 in Bloomingdale or at (202) 225-4561 in Washington.
Please also consider getting to know Peter Roskam’s 2010 opponent, Ben Lowe. Ben is an environmentalist who will work to protect our natural resources rather than to protect the big energy companies.
Here are a couple of videos that give some more background on the Harriman, TN spill and the dangers of coal waste:
